


we try to tell ourselves a good lie

by aredburn



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:54:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23548732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aredburn/pseuds/aredburn
Summary: He's not the kind of man anyone should fall for.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 90





	we try to tell ourselves a good lie

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am writing fanfic after so long. I may be out of practice haha. I watched 18 episodes in two days, whoohoo for me. This doesn't make much sense, it's just a mess of my jumbled thoughts. I hope y'all will enjoy this anyway :)

She doesn't expect this, but it happens. Somewhere between the flutter of her eyelashes and the gentle quiver of his lips her mouth is on his. 

She tries to tell herself it's the 4 am exhaustion, but truth is that she's been yearning for a while now to find out if he kisses with the same intensity and focus he profiles; she doesn't dwell on _why_ she wants to know. 

She's been wrong: he kisses with the same fervor of a man who has only 5 minutes to live his life to the fullest. He's all lips and teeth and tongue and _maybe_ , she ponders while his hand moves to the back of her neck and pulls her closer, it's because it's _her_. Maybe, from all his stolen looks and suppressed smiles and touches that never really linger, he's been yearning for this, too. 

She has no idea what exactly pulls her to him, he's a mess, a hyperactive dysfunctional act of a man, the kind she should take ten steps back from. Except she keeps taking one step closer, as if her rotational gravity needs his to keep spinning. 

His fingers close around her hair, fisting her curls inside his palm and the pressure sends a delicious shiver down her spine. She shouldn't be doing this, her tongue inside his mouth, his hand gripping her hip, but the tremor of her heart, the softness of his lips, the smell of expensive cologne make her brain scream _yes, yes, yes_. 

When she pulls back his eyes are almost black, his cheeks flushed and lips swollen and she knows he's a reflection of her. Her hands shake and whatever was flickered on inside of her makes her terrified. She wants to run from the fire igniting her blood and burning up to her fingertips. 

So she runs.

-

They don't speak of the kiss, but the atmosphere around them shifts; there's a strange sense of intimacy that propels them to share hidden smiles, to joke as if this isn't the first life in which they met, to stand a little closer, to stare a little longer. She steals food from his plate as if it's a perfectly natural behavior for two friends who kissed and pretend it never happened. He fixes the eventual rebel curl that falls over her eyes and she doesn't even flinch at his touch.

"You really need to do something about yours hands."

She ignores him. "I need you to stop fidgeting." 

"Difficult with your cold hands." 

She keeps being the one designated to equip him with the hidden microphone and she has a slight suspicion Gil does it on purpose. She doesn't usually mind, but right now she's not able to concentrate because her hands on his skin isn't as neutral as it used to be. Just because they have been pretending they didn't kiss doesn't mean she hasn't been thinking about it. _All the time._

"There you go, big baby." 

He smirks and the innuendo behind his smile bleeds into the corner of her brain that has their kiss in a loop and leaves the van before he's finished buttoning up his shirt. 

This stunt should be easy and clean: psycho babble the target until he gives up the suspect they're looking for. She stays behind with Gil while Malcolm goes with JT and she hopes this will be over today. She's been distracted through the whole case and while nobody said anything, Gil has given her a couple of stern looks. Soon enough he'll be giving her a prep talk. 

Everything goes smooth for the first 5 minutes and then shots and screams explode through her earbud. She's out of the van and running towards the entrance of the warehouse before her heart finishes its descent to her stomach. In the minute she takes to find Malcolm her brain conjures up its own version of what happened with the worst possible scenario. 

He's on the floor with blood covering his shoulder and the side of his face and her breath is gone, the ground beneath her feet pulled completely out of its axis. _Oh God, no. Oh God, no. Oh God, no_. She doesn't pay attention to the cops filling in the warehouse, the commotion around her happening like the faded images of a tv when it's on just for background noise. When her hands find his face and he's looking at her with those big, freaky, brilliant blue eyes and his smile is wide the world shifts into focus. 

"Are you ok? Where are you hurt?"

"I'm fine. JT got shot."

That's when she finally realizes the blood on Malcolm is JT's and he's groaning next to them as he holds his bleeding shoulder. She hadn't noticed her _injured partner_ because the synapses in her brain had failed her completely the moment she thought Malcolm could have been shot and maybe even dead. She realizes how _bad_ she got it for this idiotic narcissistic, crazy man she wants to smack over the head more often than she wants to kiss and it _freaks her out._

-

She drives him to his apartment and the silence of the ride is filled with frustration and confusion and everything she wants to stop feeling. This is a mess she doesn't want to get into. He doesn't try to fill the voids, either, even though he's obvious electric. 

She goes up with him to make sure he gets inside safely. He's buzzing with energy, the danger always gives him a rush of adrenaline that never seems to fade soon enough and that's when he's the most prone to stupidity. 

That's probably why he kisses her without warning. Maybe she's got the rush too, the fear she felt a few hours ago not completely wiped from her skin, because she kisses him back. Because she's fumbling with his belt, with the buttons of his shirt, with trying to keep her lips firmly pressed on his as she tries to breathe. 

Her head lights up with warning, sirens screaming at her to _pull away, step back_ , but she doesn't listen. Instead she allows him to pull her tank top over her head, to grab her ass and take her to his bed.

This is the worst thing she could be doing, but then she remembers about how it felt to imagine a world without him in it and then… she can't think of anything else but the feel of his fingers unclasping her bra, the feel of his lips sliding down from her mouth to her neck to her chest, tongue flicking out to taste her skin. 

Her fingers slide into his smooth hair, messing with the perfect gelled style, grabbing at it when his mouth closes over one hard nipple; she sees stars flashing behind her eyelids. He's good with his hands and mouth the same way he's good with his brain: sharp, focused, talented. When he finally slides into her, her skin is feverish and her body wound so tight it comes undone with a snap, the world falling apart and coming together in a swirl of emotions. 

The night is long and he doesn't sleep so they spend the minutes in perfect synchrony of moves and sighs, testing and exploring until she's sore and breathless. He's a quick learner and soon he knows what she likes, how she likes it, what makes her whimper under his fingers and lips and the pressure he keeps building over and over until she's so spent all she can do is smile through the daze. 

He smiles back as if she's that _one_ gift he's been waiting to unravel. 

When she wakes up in the morning she's alone in bed and his absence is enough to kick start her brain and all she can think is _'shit'_.

-

The following weeks move in a strange mix of slow motion as they investigate and time lapse when she's in Malcolm's bed. They don't talk about what is happening when she's moaning his name and his lips are in the most indecent corners of her body. Outside his loft they're just two colleagues protecting the city together. He refuses to let her sleep at his place as if she's never seen his night terrors, as if she's never helped tie him to the bed, but she never pushes the issue because she finds this unspoken arrangement suits her just fine; she doesn't have to waste too much thought on their non relationship relationship at all: they sleep together, they go to work and pretend as if everything is normal until they sleep together again. 

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Except nothing is normal: she craves his touch more than she has any right to, he brings her tea every morning, they sit close together as if their bodies have been redesigned to share their own personal magnetic field. 

She doesn't call him 'Bright' anymore. 

She suspects everyone else notices the changes too, if their stares are any indication. Gil hasn't said anything so she translates his silence on the subject into a non disapproval. 

Edrisa is a different talk; she gives her death glares when she thinks Dani isn't looking, gives her kurt answers and prefer to address everyone else in the room. Sometimes, when she's in a deep conversation with Malcolm, or he says something so stupid that makes her laugh and Edrisa is around she receives a betrayed, albeit resigned look from her, which is quite fine too, because if the roles were reversed Dani would feel the same. Unfortunately for all of them, feelings isn't something you choose, it's something that consumes you until you drown in it. 

If she could, Dani would never have chosen to fall for him.

-

"You're shutting me out."

He pretends this isn't an accusation. "It was a mistake. Everything."

She expected him to deny, to deflect, to go down a rampant of psychological ramble until she was too emotionally stunned to say anything. For a while now her things have been finding their way to his apartment; her favorite food in his fridge, bags of Earl Gray in his cupboard, her toiletry in his bathroom. Some of his belongings had found their way into her closet that now held his suits mixed with her work clothes. 

Still, she has no idea what their relationship status is because they never talked about it. She knows what his favorite color is, his favorite season, his favorite tv shows, the movies he likes, the places he wants to go, _his serial killer of a father_ and yet she doesn't feel like she has any claim to the word 'boyfriend'.

And lately she has been feeling him pulling away. Her texts went mostly unanswered, her calls ignored sometimes, his eyes averting hers during cases, him discreetly standing closer to Gil or JT instead of her. Her trust issues mock her for it, laugh at her for allowing this _whatever_ between them to continue for so long.

It doesn't make _any fucking sense_. 

"I'm not- I'm not the person you need in your life." His eyes are wide, and he can barely hold her gaze.

"Wow. You really need to work on your prep talk, because this ain't it." Her voice shakes and she doesn't hide the hurt she feels. She wants to disappear but there is nowhere to go when he has managed to get under her skin. 

He looks like a little boy that did something he wanted _so bad_ and the consequences finally caught up. She's standing in his kitchen, the island between them sprinkled with things that belong to her and to him: tea mugs, flowers that have yet to be watered, leftover chocolate cookies, hair clips she forgot to put away. His opened pill bottles. 

She had come unannounced to this loft to catch him by surprise, hoping whatever was going on it was just Malcolm going through something he didn't want to share. Maybe his nightmares were worse, maybe his visits to his father were taking a harder toll on him, maybe he was having a breakdown and didn't know how to reach out. There was only a small part of her afraid this could be the end of them, and it was a part she refused to listen to. 

To hear him say she's a mistake after _months_ of fucking her brains out makes her _infuriated._ "Please, don't give me this 'it's not you, it's me' bullshit. You're better than this." But his next words make her lose her balance.

"I'm in love with you."

It has always been difficult to follow his thought process on a good day and right this moment her brain is running to catch up. Then it _clicks_ , like the switch has been suddenly flickered on. The pills, his words, just knowing him should have been enough to see this coming. 

"What, you think you're unlovable?" He averts his eyes and she learned from him to recognize that as a tell. She watches him hide his shaking hands inside the pockets of his trousers. 

"My father was grooming me to be a serial killer. If he hadn't been arrested I'm afraid he'd have succeeded."

His admission feels like a blow to her stomach, leaving her breathless and in pain, trying to hold on to anything that will stop her from giving in to darkness. His fear hurts her because how could anyone ever live wondering about that kind of what if? Her anger turns into hatred, pure, deep rage to the man that ruined Malcolm's childhood and is still slowly breaking his mind piece by piece. 

It's the stupidest thing she has ever heard him say, and he's said plenty of stupid things. 

She goes around the kitchen island until she's so close he has to take a step back. "You called the cops on your father when you were 11. You really think you'd have done that if you had an ounce of that monster in you?"

It makes sense now, as his words settle in, as she thinks about all these past months with him. He never wanted her to stay overnight, never let her see _that_ side of him unless he had no other choice, never let any opening to discuss their codependency in a relationship that was never official. 

He was scared. Still is. 

He thinks he'll drag her into darkness with him, but what he doesn't realize is that she's been in the darkness already. Now she'll be holding on the top of the well until she can pull him out, too. 

"You don't know that." His voice comes out in tremors, the words barely forming in between the deep intake of breath in an attempt to stop the tears, but his eyes still glass over and they spill out.

"I do know that," she steps closer, takes his hands in hers to stop him from moving away. "You're caring, and you worry about people, even those you don't know. You use this brilliant mind of yours for the good. You grew up with Gil as a moral compass, with a wonderful mother and a loving sister. You love them and you protect them. You know right from wrong even if, right now, you're in doubt because you're afraid."

Malcolm never hid he's damaged, or sensitive and his slender form and sweet face wouldn't let him put up a tough guy front even if he wanted. Now is no different; he shakes with the tears he's probably been holding for a long time. She had never _truly_ understood the depth of his pain until now, watching him struggle to reach out for something he doesn't really believe he deserves, a damage so deep it prohibited him of doing anything else, except being in constant pain.

His worst damon isn't the one they can see locked up behind bars, but the one they can't, the one inside him, messing up his mind, ripping apart his heart. 

"Would you ever love me if you were a killer?" She whispers into his hair, her breath warm, her arms going firm around him. He hugs her back so tight she's afraid he'll crack a rib, but she doesn't move. "I'm in love with you, too. All of you."

She feels the moment something in him crumbles. His body goes slack, relaxes into her embrace. She doesn't know if this truly convinces him, but he pulls back to kiss her and that is enough. 

His mouth is hot and firm, not a hint of desperation between his lips as they slide against hers. It doesn't take long for their clothes to find the floor and their backs to find his bed and this is one of the times she takes control. She's slow, running her fingertips against the scars and bruises always dusting his pale skin like freckles, her mouth following the same path with open, hot kisses. She straddles him and takes her time to slip him inside of her; she moves in the same lazy, deliberate rhythm of her tongue in his mouth, undisturbed by the fire growing around them until his fingers dig into her thighs and his hips move to quicken her pace. 

This time she stays the night. And every night after. 


End file.
